Hey Friend, 

 

I’m a bit of an old-school operator. 

 

One of the first exercises I do with my clients is to get out my trusty flip chart and textas and draw out their current money system. 

 

 

It’s a simple exercise, yet it always produces valuable insights into what’s working and what isn’t working.

 

This is a recent example I did with a client.

 

 

The husband runs a small business and pays himself a wage of $1,745/week into his personal account. 

 

From there,

 

 

His wife works in retail and gets paid $535/week directly into their ‘joint living expenses’ account. And she sporadically moves money into her own personal spending account. 

 

 

One of the biggest problems my client told me about was they were always pulling money from their offset account to fund the living expenses account. So the offset was never growing. And it felt like they were living week to week. 

 

They also didn’t really know how much it was costing them to fund their life per month.

 

Even though they’re married and view their finances as ‘ours’, I could see their current system wasn’t set up to effectively work together. 

 

 

In the new system we created together, we started off with a ‘joint income’ account, where both their wages would be paid each week.

 

The purpose of the ‘income’ account is to act like a large water tank. 

 

It fills up each week with money. And then it’s intentionally distributed to smaller water tanks (accounts) for specific purposes. No expenses are to be paid from the ‘income’ account. 

 

 

Using the data from their Money Management Blueprint, we could easily work out how much it actually cost them to live their life per month. 

 

Turns out, they were allocating way too much to their offset, and nowhere near enough to the living expenses.

 

We then turned their personal accounts into their ‘splurge/guilt-free’ spending accounts, and allocated a dollar amount there. 

 

With their new system: 

 

$2,280 flows into their ‘joint income’ account each week.

 

And then:

 

 

These tweaks are only minor, but they can make a big difference to how your money system operates, and more importantly how you feel about the money flowing in and out of your life. 

 

This is a simple exercise you can do yourself.

 

Draw your current money system on a piece of paper. 

 

Then reflect on what is/isn’t working. Once identified, draw out your new money system that aligns with your financial priorities, and then implement. 

 

If you’re not sure how much it costs you to live your life per month, you can click here to download a copy of my Money Management Blueprint. This is the core tool I use myself and all my coaching clients use. 

 

Just go ‘File > Make a Copy’. 

 

And if you want support facilitating this exercise, feel free to reach out.

 

Have a great day,